The heavenly city
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it. Psalm 96:11
Read Hebrews 11:8—16
Abraham was promised a land. Beyond that, he was promised a city. Abraham got to see the land, to walk on it, have his sheep graze on it. He drifted about nomadically among the peoples there. He got enough of it for a cemetery he insisted on paying for.[1] His bones, and those of his wife, are there in that land. But that is not why I remember him. It is because somehow I am taken up into this great promise to Abraham. It took a new act of creation to get the next generation out of Abraham and Sarah’s spent and fruitless bodies.[2] It took a new act of creation to get Jesus out of the tomb. It took a new act of creation to wake me up from spiritual torpor. It is all the one mighty re-creation of God, the outworking of the promise, with the city still to come.
God of the promise, thank you for your word to Abraham, your life-giving word, the blessing of bodies that were dead in themselves until you made them fruitful. You have caught me up in this same life-giving promise. I cannot look back, but only forward. You promise a city not of my making but yours. A place in it not for my stripped bones, but for me to breathe and interact and commune, where I shall be neither stranger nor foreigner, but at home. When I rise from sleep tomorrow may it be as one who is living now with vigour because I live toward what is to come.
[1] Genesis 23
[2] Romans 4:19